Levels of Ethical Quality of Metaphor in Stock Market Reporting

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/basr.12111
• Author: Michael O'Mara‐Shimek

Levels of Ethical Quality of

Metaphor in Stock Market

Reporting

MICHAEL O’MARA-SHIMEK

ABSTRACT

While many news media organizations offer guidelines

about specific journalism practices such as fact checking,

attribution, mandatory referrals, etc., to promote quality

and integrity of their news products in congruence with

the publicly defended principles of journalism ethics such

as truthfulness, objectivity, and balance, that news com-

panies of all editorial positions defend, it appears that

news media organizations have not benefitted from the

more than 30 years of research in Cognitive Linguistics

demonstrating how metaphor influences how readers per-

ceive events in the news and how it impacts their atti-

tudes and behavior. Focusing on stock market reporting,

this article identifies and explores levels of ethical quality

in metaphor production by financial news media pro-

viders because improving the ethical quality of specific

news reporting mechanisms is one step toward improving

the ethical quality of news media organizations as a

whole. In this model, high levels of ethical quality, or

trustworthiness in metaphor, is the result of achieving

high levels of communicative accuracy. Communicative

Michael O’Mara-Shimek is a Lecturer at the Arts & Sciences Writing Program, Boston

University, Boston, MA. E-mail: mpomara@bu.edu.

V

C2017 W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University. Published by

Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington

Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

Business and Society Review 122:1 93–117

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accuracy is the product of metaphorical efficiency, or the

lowest ratio of cognitive force—input-output—needed by

financial news consumers to process metaphor in order to

stimulate predictable entailments, or limited creative and

exploratory thought, resulting in high cognitive efficiency.

Low ratios of cognitive force is achieved by using meta-

phors that reduce domain disparity in semantic fields

employing domain concepts that are as familiar to the

public or as similar in salient semantic features as possi-

ble. In the Appendix, this article provides a step-by-step

rubric for implementing this model for journalists and

editors in the production and editing phases.

INTRODUCTION

This research proposes a model for improving the ethical

quality of financial news media organizations by improving

the ethical quality of their use of metaphor. News media

organizations play a crucial role in society that serves the common

good by giving people the information they need to make informed

and wise decisions to be able respond to circumstances as they

develop. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in financial

news media reporting, and more specifically, reporting on the stock

market. Particularly in crisis scenarios, how the stock market is

reported upon, through the language and images that are used,

has the capability of increasing group thought anxiety and short

selling behaviors that promote instability and further losses as

investors seek to defend the integrity of their investments. But

stock market reporting also can help to restore patience and trust

in the market.

Because of the responsibilities of the press, but also because of

their rights, news media companies are subject to the fulfillment of

ethical expectations. Such expectations can be found in specific

canons and policy declarations in both professional journalism

organizations but also published by the management of most news

media providers. These declarations identify general overlapping

ideals that include transparency, accuracy, balance, fairness,

objectivity, truthfulness, and accountability to the public, but also

94 BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW